The Love of Fire and Rain Chapter One
by AmberPalette
Summary: A preview of a joint fic with A.Fleury: Snively's past is dominated by troubled romances with two women, Phoebe May and Devon Kintobor. The two girls are best friends, but love can be cruel: both are in love with him. The kicker: Phoebe is his betrothe


Working script:  "The Love of Fire and Rain," joint fanfiction with Allison M. Fleury.  To be completed God Knows When, but hey, so sue us, we're busy women! ;^)  The following is my portion of the writing thus far, basically the beginning of it.  Maybe I can coax the talented "A. Fleury" into submitting her portions of it so far.  No promises, though, she's more modest than me X^D 

All Sonic the Hedgehog characters are copyright Sega Enterprises, Archie Comics, and Dic Entertainemnt, and not of the authors' own creation, except for Phoebe May and the rest of the May family, copyrighted to ME and NOT to be used without permission.  The characters Devon, Caroline, and DaSilva Kintobor are copyrighted to A. Fleury and are used with her permission.  

So here we gooo……. J

"To others the pain was obvious

The colours of shame a bruise—unjust

Abuse of trust can't be wiped

I can't remember why

I chose to say goodbye

I'm terrified of what I might have severed

I tried to forget the drowning truth

Lashing inside my sea of youth

Life seemed a fair sacrifice for peace

I can't remember why 

I chose to say goodbye

I'm terrified of what I might have severed

I ended up too high

But never learned to fly

So coming down

I'm very thankful

You were there"

--Delerium

The boy often wondered what her funeral had been like.

Had they found her drowning in her own blood, and cleansed her pure, slicked foundation and rouge all across her ashen face, hiding the disgrace of his first act in the world? Lain her out the cool, calm, reposing essence of peace? Or had they left her as she was, placed her in the black coffin mangled and struggling, groping for her last breath, knuckles white as she clutched the spindles of her bed, crying out, vomiting out her anguish in a scream and a great bodily heave?  Had they wanted her to be remembered an angel or a martyr?  Draped her in white iridescent cloth, her cocoon until she awakened in her glorious afterlife, or in the gray shrouds that berated any who took death lightly? Had Potential or Futility, Forks or Dead Ends, been the triumphal Master of Ceremonies at her funerary procession?

And had she thought HE, the boy, was worth dying for?  Had she loved him as she gasped her last, or resented him for besting her?  He could not answer any of these things.

All he knew was that his greatest regret was living—living, and in being born, killing his mother.  His first cry had been her last.

It was his father's great sorrow as well, that fatal birthing, and his great resentment, such that the boy had become an orphan—losing mother to physical, and father to emotional, death.

Still, it was time, again, to mull over those endless questions, while suffocating from the August heat in strangling bowtie, stiff-necked, starched shirt and black suit: For the eight-year-old boy, Snively Kintobor, had a cousin for whom to worry—a cousin in his same predicament.  An orphan.  

Out the car window he beheld the scenery bleakly, through eyes of electric blue sleet—rimmed by fair skin, they were large, severe, endless pools of guilt and fear that absorbed all and offered nothing but their meaningless apology.   They took in the ripples of heat sweltering from the roadside, the gently rustling dirge of the cemetary willow trees: how appropriate that willows were symbols of death and misfortune—how eerily their limbs swayed like broken arms.  The boy imagined himself entangled in those listless arms and swallowed whole by the trunk's gaping knothole, and shuddered.  

Nope, no evergreens to be found, only fickle, dull, deciduous maples and oaks accompanying the willows as far as the eye could peer.  Inconstant, changing, like everything else.  The skyline of Megapolis, the child's urban prison, was at least lost in the hazy horizon:  Even grief, Snively selfishly mused, was good cause for him to escape the city.  

Snively followed his towering, silent father, meaty, imposing uncle, and frail cousins out of the first of a trail of at least a dozen funerary cars.  The smallest, a peevish slip of a toddler named DaSilva, was scratching at her shirt collar so viciously that her neatly braided hair came unraveled in her flushed little face.  Her elder sister, the subject of Snively's greatest concern, tugged her under one of those freakish willows, in the shade, and attempted to smooth her locks.  Her face, a smooth sculpture, perturbed, but cherubin and free of blemish, was haloed by her own mass of silken red hair, tumbling tameless over her shoulders and down her sleek, delicate black-clad body.  That hair, peculiar as it sounded, was like a guidepost to Snively—a reminder of that which was unalterable—a tongue of wild flames unquenched by time or circumstance.  She was pure fire.  Her name was Devon.  

A knot of dread threatened to cut off the boy's windpipe--every time the breeze stirred the willow branches, and made invisible his sole source of familial affection.  Then the earth's stillness returned, the leaves settled, and the freshly orphaned Devon and DaSilva Kintobor were still there—both pale, ascetic, in grieving shock, but still _alive_.   They scurried to their spots next to Snively, who masked his worry with a piercing glare.  DaSilva only cocked her tiny head, but Devon's great querulous eyes, locking with the boy's, were the icy jewel twins of his own—the only difference was, they lacked his particular breed of spite.  He immediately regretted his misplaced contempt.  Dodging an apology from the eldest cousin, too afraid that he might incur guilt from a creature so undeserving of suffering, he turned his head and sighed deeply.  The act aggravated his allergies and he hacked a cough, gripping his sides, but grateful for any distraction, pleasant or otherwise, from the emotional maelstrom within:. 

And yet, what was the use?  They were finally at their destination. And Devon was touching his shoulder.  

Why the griever comforted rather than _received_ comfort, Snively knew, was _solely_ the product of his cousin's immeasurable compassion—and his own _inadequacy_.  For the first time in his life, the boy believed his father's claims that he was useless, putrid, and disappointing:  He _hated_ himself.  He shrugged her little hand from his shoulder with a soft whine of, "Devon, _don't_."   The girl only blinked at him, stunned, while her sister clung harder to her black velveteen dress.  Thus the two confused children planted their patent-shoed feet into the sod and forgot how to move forward.

Snively darted ahead. . . . but hesitated near the hole in the earth where his aunt and uncle were to be placed, hung back and flung a shirtsleeve across his sharp, jutting nose.  He sniffed mightily, trying to stay brave; but as his thoughts returned to his troubled kin, it became difficult to keep out the memories of his beloved lost aunt and uncle.  Mobian sympathists, they had offered nothing but compassion to marginalized and stray members of Overland Society—including the enemy of the impending war . . .  

And _himself_. 

A surprise cookie or muffin, street hockey lesson, or free haircut at the ritziest local barbershop—or best of all, an open ear when no one else recognized Snively's rebellious estrangement from father and peers—were no surprise when coming from Aunt Caroline or Uncle Henry. Their children—yes, Devon, and her little sister DaSilva, a sibling too mercifully young to understand the loss, were marooned suddenly and cruelly when the politically radical but saintly pair met their fate in a plane crash: gunned down by Mobian Border Troops who had little stomach for Overlanders—for ALL Overlanders.  Though Snively, a child of keen perception, knew his father was lying, Colin Sr. had forgotten his own choking grief, and his bigotry against furries, long enough to claim to the children that the death had been instant—and painless.  

As Snively continued to wipe his dampened eyes and nose with his tux sleeve, his father turned on his heel, grinding his feet into the lush green ground of the cemetery. Seemingly unwilling to spare his own child as he had his nieces, he seized Snively's thin arm and pulled him close.   Bloodshot weariness weighted that frostbitten Kintobor stare, but his voice was strong and vindictive as ever.   "QUIT dawdling, son, and get to the front of the line with your cousins!  What the blue blazes is the MATTER with you?"

Snively winced, drawn at once from his reveries.  "They're n-not at the front," the boy stammered, despising his own _cowardice_.  "They're b-b-ack behi-be-bbb…"   He gestured at the two girls, still huddled at the rear of the mass of mourners.  Nausea filled his belly when he felt a tear streak down his face—and saw the alarm on his father's, as the man witnessed the evidence of his weakness.  He had wanted so badly to prove to Colin that he could protect his cousins . . . .rather than the other way around.  At last relinquishing a hopeless battle, the child sank against his father, buried his face in his great iron chest, and began weeping uncontrollably.

The entire company of mourners looked on, brimming with sympathy as they trudged to the gravesite:  Only Colin himself appeared all but sickened by Snively's fear and sorrow.  He growled, unmeshed himself from his son, and shook him once, hard. . . but a relenting kind of pity flashed across his features.  "Steady on, boy.  Don't break down now.  Come, now, stop crying at once. At ONCE, Snively!"

"Let him be, Colin," injected a deep silken voice.  It was a snake's hiss and a roll of thunder all at once—hardly soothing.  But for the moment, Snively was thankful for young, eccentric Uncle Julian's typical favoring intercession. A great hulking man, Julian was as terrifying as he was brilliant, even despite his soft-spoken demeanor.  Most unnervingly, Colin's youngest sibling, married only to his scientific work, sported the narrow, scrutinizing red-brown eyes of their mentally institutionalized father, and the same dart-sharp auburn moustache. Oozing an almost inappropriately snide confidence, he lumbered between the two, his black mourner's cloak billowing like a phantom, and rested a hand across Colin's tensed shoulder.  "Can't you see the boy's in _pain_?"

"Just like _you_ are, eh, brother?"  Colin set his steely jaw, weaving sarcasm into his hushed voice. "I can only _imagine_."   But he let go.

Snively lashed away from Colin, lower lip jutting in defiance, smacked away his own tears, and stalked ahead.  Then again, the boy considered, maybe father was already blessedly numb about the loss of his sister, an intelligent, caring, warm creature with a heart hauntingly similar to . . . 

To his dead mother's.

Colin cantered to the rear of the line of people, scooping DaSilva up in his arms and nudging Devon ahead.  The two girls took their morbid posts at the front of the crowd: beside the black hole to which they were to give their mother and father.  DaSilva whimpered and dug her fat toddler fingers into Colin's trouser leg.  This time, tolerance, rather than the repugnance he showed his son, kept him from tearing her away and demanding she be "brave."  

The flame-haired girl crouched down on her knees, uncaring as to how the soil might stain her gown, and searched the hole as if seeking the beneficial qualities of a new apartment or house—a new dwelling place.  Evidently, she discovered no such comforts.  Her voice rose to a strangled sob, quivering with the effort of restraint that did not fit, that was like an oversized garment for the more mature, the more seasoned, at her five years.  Like a funerary shroud.  "Well, where are they NOW, Snively?" She grabbed the boy's hand as, finally, he approached the grave-to-be.  Snively started, lungs vaulting into his throat, feeling as though it were the corpse of his aunt, and not his cousin, bursting with anguished vitality, who locked him in her grip.  

Still, what kindness could he possibly offer her?  "I don't. . ."   What kindness, when one death already was HIS sin, when he was a killer and not a mourner, from birth?  "I don't _know_."

"They've gone to God now, Devon." The rumbling iron words belonged to Colin.  Proving himself, once again, to be a man both beautifully rugged…and stifling.  The girl sought his face for comfort. . . Snively's father was towering, severe, lean, with high cheekbones and sour countenance that glided inward as a smoothly chiseled, convex curve. His jaw was clean-shaven like marble, but roguishly strong, cut out of rock by a chiseler too hasty to soften edges.  He had, indeed, the body of a rabid warrior and yet the restraint of the most refined of statesmen—and the chilly demeanor to boot.  His own locks harkened to the unrestrained red-orange hue of his niece's—yet those narrow, critical eyes of sleet were a far more accurate representation of his spirit. Flanking the two children, posture rigid and puritanical, he fidgeted with his necktie—and, seeing her desperate gaze, at last rested his heavy soldier's hand on Devon's shoulder.  She cringed; Snively, anticipating a similar treatment, slunk out from under his father's touch.  

Colin did not attempt to console his son a third time.  He was by nature ill-at-ease with fragility, with innocence, sensitivity, and childhood:  glaringly evident in those years of estrangement from his own wandering son—the eight Christmases the boy spent counting the colored lights in his room (father did not approve of multicolored lights, for they hearkened chaos—all-white lights acknowledged the holiday while not usurping the authority and order of the home) rather than come downstairs and join his only living parent in welcoming the relatives and inlaws to the great wealth of food awaiting in their dining room.  Alienation, it seemed, was the politician and war hero's crowning skill.  His words would have been supremely comforting had they not been uttered with such a brisk, chilly impatience for silent compliance.  As it was, the child only withdrew further into her misery, and her cousin into further confusion as to how he might help her. 

Then, as the pall bearers passed with the elegant, polished cherrywood caskets, Devon could no longer bear it.  Her shock shattered like sharded stained glass church windows—a sacred cushion from grief finally lost.  A shriek pealed from her young lips and she dove for her mother's coffin.  

"Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye"—the empty word spilled from her over and over again like a drone or a mantra.  She was desperate to accept her loss, to retreat back to her apathy, but her tiny white fingers clung to the lid of the closest casket like white-blanched leeches.  "Mama, daddy, goodbye!"  Then her moans became wordless shrieks, and she resolved to begin striking out at the pall bearers themselves.   Tears and spittle flew from her face as she clawed at them until her elegant presence became savage.  

DaSilva screamed her horror.  

"Devon, love, _no_, you _must_ stop that," Colin cried, at once generous with his paternal affection—almost even a fitting surrogate father for his niece.  But then, as he rushed to pull her away from the bewildered pall bearers and fingerprint-stained caskets, he abandoned the petrified DaSilva and shoved Snively into Julian's arms.  Devon allowed herself to be held and comforted there next to the caskets and the black hole and death itself.  And Snively, discarded as usual, at once hid his face in his uncle's hulking belly and resumed his weeping.  Julian did not stroke him or pet him, or pretend that the situation would resolve itself in a happy ending—he merely held the child. . . who was deceived into thinking he'd finally found his hero. . . .   

For the boy, the poor little fool, forgot what he would one day come to know better than any other truth: that there was such a thing as an ulterior motive to one's affections.

But the time had not yet come for this bitter epiphany—and so young Snively clung trusting to Uncle Julian, and Uncle Julian, who saw every human being as either a hurtle or a tool—who pegged little Snively as the new, shiny set of stainless steel pliers that would one day sharpen its blades and twist and distort and bend things to his will--fed his faith willingly by letting him do so.

The tiny DaSilva joined her cousin--flung herself against her youngest uncle--who had become their pillar of strength. Julian, secretly a man who loathed children and their innocent convictions, chewed on the edge of his moustache and made his best attempt not to seem a repulsed pillar.  

A wind signaling approaching rain cascaded across the earth and broke the heat.  Snively took it as a sign that he could be allowed to break away from the procession without being condemned by God, and Virtue, and his Conscience, and all those other enormous, vague and omnipresent proper nouns that made a boy flinch with his hand caught in the cookie jar.

So, instead of hugging to his uncle and vainly wishing away the troubles that would continue to haunt, he squirmed free of Julian, mumbled an explanation—"Gonna go visit my mum"—and stumbled off.  

"You'll get all wet, boy," the hulking scientist rumbled, as loudly as tact would allow.  "Wait until the storm passes."

But Snively was unusually resolved, so he didn't even hear his uncle.

Nor did he see his cousin, craning her neck over Colin's shoulder, her heartbreak augmenting threefold as she witnessed him, much like her parents . . . abandoning her.

Phoebe Rain May was a plucky, tenacious girl of plump cheeks, warm amber eyes, sunbaked skin, freckled stub nose, and cascades of raven hair. A seven-year-old child, she was renowned—or perhaps infamous—for her unorthodox ideas.  A fact to which her eldest of five other siblings, eleven-year-old Matthew May, could now attest.  For he was following her to her newly chosen playground:  the city cemetery.  

Their swingset had been broken when Phoebe had decided to try and climb _up_ the slide instead of slip _down_ it, in order to conquer verticality itself, for she had so _loved_ a challenge—but now, after she had tried to use the tire swing to gain the velocity to do this, and it had gone crashing into the entire set and knocked it—and the neighbor's car—to oblivion. . . . well,  she was bored.  

But there was something else.  Something even more insufferable.

She was getting a "sense" again—all the bloody time, Matthew mused, Phoebe was getting "senses": these vague feelings of joy, dread, frustration, fear, connection or severance, when ruminating on a choice or possibility. Sometimes a glimpse of an unknown face or place, his outlandish sister claimed, accompanied her feelings, until they were undeniable.  As these "senses" never seemed to steer her awry, she resolved to do their bidding at all costs.  Thus, she claimed, she had "sensed" that the only the dynamic mixture of nature, bad weather, and poltergeists was sufficient to play today's revamped hide-and-seek game. 

"But why?" The portly boy had demanded of his pliant, aerobically inclined sister, as they sprinted from their wealthy father's sprawling grasslands to the cemetary grounds.  "Are you _daft_, sis?  What is so significant about a creepy cemetery that dad and mum's creepy _forest_ in our _backyard_ can't offer?"

There was a reason for it, she insisted, little nose wrinkled with fierce certainty, eyes ablaze.  Always a reason for her "senses."

So on they plodded, scanning tombstone after engraving after crypt, until Phoebe had found her ideal stage:  a solitary marble headstone, impeccably polished, lovingly marked:  "Steadfast wife, selfless mother."  The name was of no consequence, but her age drew poignant sorrow from little Phoebe: barely thirty years in the world before stolen back to an untouchable place beyond mortality and pain.  And a _mother_.. ..she could not bear to imagine her own mother, a swarthy, bold, tender Latino who'd given her black hair and freckles and cinnamon skin, dead…gone…lost . . . reveling in some far golden paradise, but leaving her beloved bereft of the vitality, the love, that made lollipops as sweet as they were, hugs as secure as they were, fireflies as beautiful as they were, life as bearable as bearable allowed.

Try as she wished to begin her game, to return to her own whimsy and mischief, Phoebe was an intellect and a poet beyond her years: the one child who dared to blow paper wads behind the back of the tyrannical schoolteacher, who enjoyed wearing mismatched stockings, and who saw the rainbow spectrum in the oil puddle rather than the murk itself.  Being the sensitive spirit that she was, she just could not tear her eyes from the inscription, or her fingers from the marble.  Or her soul from the discontentment, the irresolution, the futility and sadness, that it evoked.

A few feet away, shoving thick, obstinate fists in his trouser pockets, Matthew groaned and glowered at the blackening sky, then at his entranced little sister—and smiled despite himself.   Her attempt to absorb the tombstone through mental osmosis, eyes squinted, shoudlers hunched forward, chin in hands, gave her the appearance of a praying mantis or a very pious monk.  

A tiny wet ping, cold and sharp, struck his caramel brown pug nose.  It was beginning to rain. . . .  

He was running.  Running.  All he knew was flight.  All he understood was escape.  Running.  Could not feel.  Could not think.  Just break free.  Just find her. 

Wetness, water, rinsing drenching, but never could it cleanse him until he knew how to rid the guilt himself, until he was a joy instead of a sorrow, a credit instead of a disappointment. . . Rain, it was, blinding him and camoflauging his tears. . . . 

"Selfless?"  The girl pressed her forehead to the tombstone, flesh welting against the hard cold marble, pondering, pondering.  What debt did the living have to pay for this sainted creature?  

Could they be in . . . . pain?

"Pain…"  No sooner had she uttered the word aloud when it happened. . . like ice-tipped knives, all shooting up her fingers and merging in her throat and chest.  A tiny whimper escaped her lips.  But she'd seen it now—she'd _sensed_ it. The blue.  The cold, empty blue. The endless void of blue.  No face with it, only shimmering lonely blue—like the top of the ocean from the view of the soul sinking, drowning, suffocating.

Solitude.  Abandonment.  Futility.

Someone was hurting.  Someone near.  Someone wanted to uproot….and the effort was like icy anguish.

Yes, someone was hurting.  And some greater power was bombarding her with her own purpose: She, privy to it, was to _ease_ it.  She was to thaw the blueness, the solitude--to awaken someone very near. Phoebe had never been so certain of anything in all her life. Phoebe glanced at the ground beneath the grave, and the air around it.  She could swear she felt the presence of another.  "Who is it you want me to look after, Mrs. Kintobor?" she whispered, slanting a sly look the tombstone's way. She hesitated….another sense, just a hunch:  "Who is _he_?"  

The marble slate only stared somberly back at her.  Somberly. . . 

Expectantly.

Now the boy flung off his black suit jacket on the dirt, only a short sleeved blouse and disheveled tie remaining, sopping wild hair sticking to his cheeks . . . still seeking _her_. . . he could see the grave from here. . . she was almost in reach. . . 

So refreshing tonight, somehow, was that deafening clash of thunder—so invigorating and alive was the rainstorm tonight . . . 

For it was so cold that it numbed him, skin to heart to soul and back.

"Phoebe!  C'mon, lass, let's get this show on the road or let's _forget_ it!" Matt May chuckled, surveying his soaked t-shirt.  "You want us to get so much waterlog we turn into human raisins?  Besides, haven't you looked uphill? See all those people in black?  They're having a funeral, Rain—and that redheaded tall guy is the Justice Minister.  The big cheese, sis.  We'll be in deep . . . we'll be in trouble if we disturb the ceremony."  He stuck his tongue out and caught a few stray drops while he awaited her response.

Without even once turning, she flung a hand in the direction of the far off morgue.  "In a minute.  Go hide back there . . . somewhere."

Her brother laughed outright.  "You're such a little freak, sis."  But he complied, lumbering off downhill to a more wooded, grassier area of the cemetary.  She didn't even hear him go.

"The selfless Mrs. K."  The girl, determined to solve, placed both hands firmly over the engraved word. "Ease his pain.  _Selfless_. . ."

The thunder overhead roared down at her.  Then, as if to obscure what heaven and its most selfless of angels wished to divulge, the sky became angry.  It began to throw great chunks of ice down at Phoebe in place of the refreshing rain.  Chunks that struck her in the shoulder blades, neck and ribs.  She squealed and dove to the ground behind the grave, dodging bruises; it was an excellent shelter from the unforgiving hail.  

Something was dashing towards her from the ground, at a very rapid pace.  Something that almost looked human.

And before Phoebe knew she was no longer alone behind the marble haven, another body, lean and pale, streaked up and dove behind the tombstone, landing on top of her with a grunt.  Neither she not her new neighbor moved until the hail abated and the rain again showered down.  

Phoebe opened her eyes and gawked at the sopping wet creature that lay atop her, obscuring her view of the churning sky.   

A thick mass of tangled red-brown hair framed a thin, milky-hued face, full pouting lip, and sharp, brooding eyebrows. It was a strange, aloof manner of comeliness that she beheld, handsome by no stretch of the convention, and yet unmistakably beautiful. Like a young, molting falcon with a very sharp beak. She found herself greeted by the eyes of a ghost.  A _boy_, roughly her age, wearing the _spirit_ of a ghost.  She saw her face mirrored in his eyes, the only vitality or color that he sported—a warm butterscotch tint to the icy blue crystals that scrutinized her now, with anything but friendliness. Phoebe, the top of her head pressed against the tombstone, seized each side of it and squeezed for courage.

BLUE.  She was almost too stunned by the revelation to hear him address her.  "Get your hands off my mother NOW," the boy hissed, summoning every fiber of hatred his soul could muster.

The girl gasped at him and jerked away  "You mean this is your . . . _your_ . . ."

"Yes."  His pale fingers wrung and wriggled at his sides with barely contained fury.  His voice was thin.  "Now, go away."

Phoebe played with a strand of her hair, a frequent habit when she was deep in thought.  "You don't look like someone who should be left alone."  She forced herself not to giggle.  "And besides, how can I leave until you get _off_ of me?"

"Fine.  Here."  He drew in a hefty breath and expelled the most protracted sigh he could muster, just to illustrate the extent of his irritation.  It made her laugh as he rose, for his breath blasting against her cheek smelled wonderful:  the aroma of peppermint candy mingled with the musty scent of summer rain and wet earth.  

"What's so damned funny?" he growled, with a defensive shrug.  But he helped her to stand, even as he charaded nonchalance.  He strove to tuck a wet, wrinkled dress shirt back in his black trousers belt a he waited.

She told the truth.  "You smell great.  Your breath, I mean."  

The boy hardly seemed taken aback.  "_That's_ what you want, is it?"  One hand plunged into his pants pocket, dug, and pulled out a wrapped peppermint drop.  The red and white stripes twirled like baton streamers through the air as, like the noblesse oblige offering charity to a street urchin, he tossed it into her hands.  

Phoebe guffawed, catching it effortlessly and popping it into her mouth.  "No, it isn't, but _thank_ you!"

"Well, don't make a habit of begging," the boy grunted.  Sounding eerily like his father.  "Or of . . .no . . . well . . ."  He frowned; the long delicate nose jutting from between his eyes wrinkled at the nostrils in thought.  He sniffed haughtily, trying to appear casual. " I suppose you're as good a person to ask as any.  Do you think it's wrong to _cry_?  When something _sad_ happens?"

The girl blinked, confused as to his sudden switch from impermeable to candid.  "No," she replied. Then, taken as ever with simple pleasures, she changed the subject—sticking her tongue out at him.  She curled it; the peppermint danced on the tip of it as she skipped around the graves giggling, eyes crossed like those of a grade-A circus clown.  "Can you do _this_? _Whee_!"

The boy watched her, eyes gaping, but mouth threatening to curl into something vaguely resembling a smile. "Are you _crazy _or something?"  He tossed soaked hair from his face as he queried.

 "Probably."  Phoebe dashed behind him, tugged on a wayward lock of his hair, making him dart around griping at her, and thrust herself into a somersault.  She landed again in front of the grave of their meeting. "So do you still want me to?"

"Want you to _what_?"

Again the giggling, laughter like silver coins tossed in a brandy snifter and singing against the glass.  It made the boy shiver for some unknown reason, and with some unknown emotion that was utterly alien to misery.  

"Want me to _go away_," she finally supplied.  Her brows rose expectantly, bemusedly.  She knew he would say no.  

He winced, realizing he'd been defeated, recalling his recent caustic greeting.  He'd had no clue she intended no disrespect to his mother.  He'd had no clue he needed a companion—one just like this strange little suntanned, be-freckled creature with bottomless whiskey-amber eyes and gangly mosquito-bitten ankles—as much as he did.  "Um. . . you know, I have a lot more where that mint came from. . . "  He tried to grin. . . "And, er. . . some. . . chocolate kisses, too. If I don't eat them now, they'll all melt.  Want to help me finish them off?"

Phoebe grinned, seating herself on the sod under a nearby tree.  "I think I can manage that."

The boy eyed the tree she'd chosen—the only evergreen in the entire cemetery.  Its scent was sweet and strong, spicy and fresh.  Phoebe enclosed a clasp of needles in her fingers and stroked them.  "Don't you love these pines?" she cooed. 

 It was then that Snively Kintobor realized he was no longer alone.  

Forty minutes later, the two newfound conspirators, back to back against the tree trunk, had consumed an entire box of chocolate samplers (that is, a box in _each _pocket of the boy's nearby discarded—and oversized—jacket) and ten peppermints. To say that their small, young stomachs were experiencing a little discomfort would be a gross understatement.  But at least the rain no longer felt so cold.  At least the boy no longer needed numbness to feel safe. When their mouths weren't full with his stash of delicious, expensive sweets, a bubbling conversation about all topics ranging from the Mobian species to evolution to the best flavors of bubble gum, the boy's trouble with tears was to resurface.

But presently, he moaned, hunched forward, and let out a loud belch.

Phoebe clucked in protest—nevertheless, fit to burst herself, and wishing to do the same.  "That's disgusting," she snapped aloud.  

"Why?"  The boy rolled luxuriously on his side—closer to her.  A contented drowsiness came into his eyes.  "It feels so much better."

"Because it isn't polite."

"_Polite_?  You mean that thing that our parents worry about more than they do about _us_?" Keen, impish perception came into the boy's face.  Any more of a sneaky edge about those crystalline irises, and mischief might yield to spite.  But as it was, Phoebe was enchanted.  The boy leaned yet closer, earnestly buoying his "masculine charms" of eight years.  In a purring, sly voice, he claimed, "I _promise_ I won't tell anyone you burped in public."  Then he crossed his heart.  " In fact, I _swear._" A deliciously wicked changeling's snicker escaped him.

For some reason, the very possibility of incurring more mirth in this enigmatic, elusive boy was reason enough to comply.  Phoebe belched—louder, in fact, and longer, than her male compatriot.  It reverberated from the hilltops.  The boy was stunned.  She smiled.  "How was _that_?"

  His eyes gleamed with glee. And approval.  Still, he wasn't about to admit he'd been bested by a girl.   "_Well. . . . _I suppose it's a _start_.  But don't worry:  You'll learn."  Sobriety again seized him, as if a troubling recollection had cast a shadow on his humor.  He pulled himself upright, eyes riveted on the grave that had united them.  His mother's grave. A gust of the remaining tempest stirred his auburn-chestnut hair, obscuring a deeply troubled face.  His voice came faint, weak and tremulous.  Afraid.  "Hey, are you sure about what you said?  I mean. . . about crying?  Or. . . am I a. . . a _coward_?"

"No."  Phoebe shook her raven head, fingering a stray candy wrapper still stuck to her sticky palms."You _aren't_.  You're only a coward if you let someone else _make_ _you_ believe you are.  The more you try not to be a coward by not _feeling_ anything, the more you'll _become_ one."

Now those intimidating twin blue crystals were locked on her.  Judging her words. "What do you _mean_?" the boy demanded.  His breathing came out shallow, rushed, a scowl cutting across his fair forehead.  The shadow was growing.  

  She played with her shoe strings, tying them together.  They were nearly as tangled as she was, trapped in a sudden potent need to comfort this newfound friend.  "Well. . . My dad reads a lot of ancient literature.  He really likes this one author, Truman Capote, who once said something like, um. . . 'a man who never cries stores up a lot of poison.'  So, no, I don't think you want to be poisoned from the _inside_."

The boy was almost appeased.  Almost not regretful that he'd exposed a deep wound to a total stranger. ". . . Thanks." 

Phoebe smiled; as if by some force beyond her tiny sunbaked body, she felt her hand slide into his and squeeze it, dirt crusted and all.  His lip trembled and he echoed his gratitude, letting her tiny round fingers stay there curled around his long, blanched, gaunt ones.  He reached out and pressed a finger to the bridge of her nose, as if wanting to memorize it.  As if he feared she'd vanish.  "You have ten freckles on your nose," he breathed, matter-of-factly.

"Eleven," she retorted, doing her best to soften her indignity.  She took off her sneakers and poked the side of his foot with her wriggling toes.  

It was the first time the boy noticed that somewhere between the funeral site and his mother's grave, he'd discarded his best dress shoes and left his bare feet exposed to the mud.  He took her playful gesture as an effort to point out his misbehavior and to correct it. "Sorry," he mumbled, curling his toes in and tugging down his trouser legs to best hide the social faux pas. But to Phoebe, it was acceptable: Why criticize what made a person more comfortable--_happier_?  So she continued to assault his toes with her own, frowning.  "Quit _moving_," she squawked, around a giggle, her big toe chasing his ankle and poking it.  Unwittingly entrancing him, as she elaborated, "Well, see, odd numbers are so much more _interesting_ than even ones.  More _possibility_ when it's. . . incomplete.  When there's something to look _forward _to." 

So thankful that she withdrew the vindictive scorn so typical of his father, Snively Kintobor fell in love at that instant.  At the ripe old age of eight years.  "Possibility.  Yeah, I _like_ that. _Eleven_, then."  Even though there were _really_ ten.  He squeezed her hand back.

Their eyes met.  For a split second, there was a kind of intimate pact between the two children, a total and complete comprehension of each other's very being, a sweet, simple, innocent wisdom, in the stillness, the rain pattering to the marble and stone and the wet lush grass.  In that instant, something _new_ was born among the graves.  Something elusive, like chased joy soon to be caught and owned.  Like _love_.  

Still the fear lingered, smothered the brilliance in his eyes. He couldn't bring himself to let the subject go.  "What if it's too _late_?  I've never let myself. . . I. . . Something awful once happened but I wasn't ever _allowed _to show I was sad.  It. . . he. . . my dad, he said it wasn't my _right_.  Then. . . today I _cried _but it doesn't feel like it was . . . _enough_.  He told me to stop, but it feels like I should _never_ stop."

A feeling of futility almost drowned Phoebe, at her seven years.  She was fresh, springing from a content family and a safe childhood.  She knew nothing of insurmountable sorrow.  Yet still she wanted to try.  "Well, what about her?  Was it sad _then_?  Is _that_ it—what you're afraid about?" 

The boy's nostrils flared.  The warmth in his gaze began to retreat.  "_Don't_ ask," he threatened, suddenly tense.

She nodded at the grave the boy had come to visit, persistent. Something intuitive in her sensed she'd hit her mark.  "No, I mean, how did _she_ die?  Is _that_ why you feel like a coward?" But now she knew she'd regret her curiosity. Like burping in public. 

"Stop," he hissed.  Softer, "What do _you_ know?  Please, shut _up_." His free hand dug into the dirt.

"Well, that doesn't matter," she added, more gently.  Too eager to console him to even hear his pain.  "I'm sure she _understands_."

But it was too late. Like alcohol poured over a cut, the question had been good, cleansing, for the boy to confront . . .  but he was petrified by the agony of healing. His face whited, a bleached sheet.   His hand snapped away from hers.  Air sucked into his lips like an inflating balloon.  And then, shooting like a rocket to his feet, he exploded.  "You bugger off, you little BITCH! How DARE you?  What do YOU know about ANYTHING?"  Suddenly a cruel demon, he lunged at Phoebe—and clawed her across the cheek.  The blow knocked her on the flat of her back; she tasted blood in her mouth from the cut that his mere blunt fingernails had inflicted.  She was so shocked by the change in him that the pain was momentarily numbed.

But then the sting finally came. And the pity in her died, and found its own grave, in that instant.  Phoebe was furious.  Her kindness had been betrayed by someone terrified to expose his sorrow.  Maybe it WAS too late.

The boy was coming at her again, teeth clenched, one hand bloodied, nothing like the sweet creature she'd spent the hour scrutinizing.  But this time she was ready for him.  This time she had no forgiveness left.  "That HURT!" she roared, grabbing his wrists. "What's the MATTER with you?" But one vengeful hand freed itself and slammed a fist into her nose, sending a gush of thick redness down her face and chin.  Phoebe gasped, but repressed the urge to let go.  Heaving all her sixty pounds against the boy, she slammed him into the pine sapling that had been their haven.  The force of it splintered the trunk in two; the boy tumbled into it, lost in its grieving, quivering branches.  He scrambled to his feet, face, neck and arms etched with fine red marks inflicted by its needles.  Phoebe took the chance to wipe her bloodied nose with her shirt sleeve, sniffing mightily.  Her eyes flooded with angry tears that she would not allow to spill over. She went for him again, while he was still stunned, but halted when she heard something crunch underneath her, and saw a felled pine branch under her bare foot.

The two children stopped dead in their tracks, beholding the evidence of their rage.  The young tree had fallen and died. . .  directly over his mother's grave.  He turned to Phoebe now, all fury lost in his grief. "I'm so _sorry_," he whined, hiccupping back a sob at the word "sorry."  He gulped, reaching a hand towards her wounded face; it was almost hidden in redness from the nose down, excepting the frequent times her stained sleeve accosted it.  His chatter grew desperate.  "Please, really, I _am_.  I never _knew_ her.  I wanted to know her, it _hurts_.  I'm  sorry."  

But Phoebe, not wanting to be dragged under with him, pulled away.  "Don't touch me.  You hurt _me_.  You didn't _care_, you _hurt_ me.  Don't TOUCH me."  She stumbled several feet away from him, towards her brother Matthew, who, having realized he'd been stood up at his game, was scrambling up the hill from the morgue.  A sob dragged out her throat as she saw his pace quicken and his eyes widen.  His love hurt, when she saw his fear for her.  _Love hurt_. "Rain!" her burly brother cried, opening his arms.  "God, sis, what _happened_?"  She leapt into his grasp and wept bitterly, staining his shirt with her nosebleed.

Realizing he'd been rejected once again, that he'd been a source of sorrow once again, Snively sank to the ground among the pine branches and joined her.  Perhaps making up for lost time, for his own cheeks were streaked with wetness as much as hers were with blood.  Their cries were a perfect harmony, hers hearty and loud, his soft, shuddering, forlorn: and both muffled to the grave that had caused their contention, lost beneath the tree branches.  It was heartbreaking.

"I _killed_ her," the boy whimpered, barely audible, into his hands.  "She died when I was _born_. Now you _know_, okay? Are you _happy_ now?  I KILLED her."

Phoebe was stunned.  Still a mere child, she had no comfort left for such a claim.

A sound in the distance—voices, those of grown men and women, and suddenly a host of black-clad figures appeared barely ten feet from the three children.  At the head of the company were Colin and Julian Kintobor themselves, and a redheaded little girl.  Julian's face betrayed no emotion, but Colin's was drawn with ill-concealed worry.  And the girl, vaguely familiar, looked nearly as angry as the boy had been when he had assaulted Phoebe. "Good _God_, son, THERE you are!"  Colin half-snarled, vaulting over tombstones and sprinting around graves, until he'd reached his crouched-over son.  Still Snively wept, curling into himself as his father hoisted him to his feet.  "Come, now, boy, the funeral is over and you're soaked.  And—barefoot! By God, BAREFOOT! What are you, an APE?  Go find your shoes NOW, do you know what those COST me?" Hiding his affection, as usual, behind his rage.  

"You left me!"  The beautiful little redhead came at the boy now, and the family resemblance between them was unmistakable: the icy eyes--altered only by the greener hue of the sea; the fair skin; even the peevish demeanor.  She seemed to feel, whether by blood or otherwise, a peculiar ownership over him.  And it only covetously flared when she beheld Phoebe standing there next to the boy, still cradled in Matthew's arms, but looking at that which she believed belonged to her.  Glaring defiantly at Phoebe, the girl clung to the eight-year-old's free arm as his father dragged them both towards their black limosine.  "You left me, you left me!" she murmured in the boy's ear, still clinging like a leech, like a dead creature.  Phoebe shuddered, and rejoined the boy in their weeping.

Matt was the first to cease their vocal dirge.  To hell with tact and respect towards the Justice Minister and his kin. "Little _bastard_, I don't care _whose_ son you are!"  Meaty, protective, loyal Matthew, who would die for any one of his siblings in a heartbeat, leered at the pale boy, who had gone strangely silent, with an outstretched fist.  His voice was soft but rabid.  "You so much as TOUCH my little Rain again, I'll RIP you APART! GOT THAT?"

" 'Rain', eh?" the little demon child retorted, unintimidated, as Colin shoved him away from the gravesite.  He was still looking at Phoebe.  "Is that what YOU are?  Who you are?  A Rainstorm, eh?  A cloudburst that just sweeps in and cleans and rinses away all the grime of the earth, and changes everything that is known and safe, and then just whooshes on into the horizon without so much as an APOLOGY?"

"THAT is ENOUGH," Colin hissed, pressing his son into the rear seat, squeezing his wrist for compliance.  He turned to Matthew.  "Young Master May, I _assure _you that your father and I will share a _heartfelt_ discussion about this. . . incident."  He patted the boy's taut shoulder and climbed in next to his son and his redheaded, clinging kin.  "Now, _please_ go home before you get struck by lightning."  The typically imposing Julian remained quiet, climbing into the front seat and murmuring a destination to the driver.  Then, like a vulture, he settled his bulk into his own seat, and waited.  

But the girl ignored them all.  She only saw the boy.  "Well?" his lips formed the words, mutely.  "I only see. . ." and he held up his ten fingers.  _Ten_.  Eyes narrowed, she leveled a scornful gaze on her assaulter.  Not even bothering to satisfy him with rubbing her nose again. _Eleven. She would be liberated by her attitude, not anchored by her circumstance, by the "facts." Loser.  She would not sink like him. _"Sod off," she dismissed him, in a flat, deadly voice not well suiting a child.  

Colin's lip twitched in vexation and distaste—but, nonetheless, privy to his son's difficult nature, also comprehension.  He slammed shut the limo door before the boy could respond.  The minute the glass window was sealed and muteness lay between the two children, Phoebe watched the great, severe man begin to gesture wildly at his son, his lips contorting in to the cruelest of chastisements.  The redheaded girl seemed to hear none of it; she had fallen fast asleep against the boy's chest, content that he was once again fully _hers_.  A smaller girl, a toddler and evidently her sister, had found similar shelter against her arm.  The boy himself cowered from his father's verbal flogging, but his eyes were still fixed on one spot.  Phoebe.

He thrust back her glare as long and hard as he could, neck craned over his shoulder, before the car had finally transported him far enough from her that he had to turn away.

He had been the one in pain, the one with the spirit of blue, the one she was to heal.  To thaw.  But suddenly realization crashed down upon Phoebe.  She had _blown_ it.

She hadn't even learned his name.

As Matt ushered her towards the hospitable warmth of home, Phoebe turned one last time to the grave that had caused so much joy and pain in the past 24 hours, the grave of Virginie Kintobor.  Her vision was blurry with her own rare tears.  "I'm _sorry_," she breathed.

A dozen feet from her, hauled away to the onyx funeral car, his wrist under his father's angry clutch and his eyes cast away from the fiery, trusting head of his cousin, Snively somehow heard.  "So am I," he said.

THAT"S ALL FOR NOW!!!


End file.
